Archives for March 2017

Open innovation takes many forms. One of the most exciting examples to hit my desk of late is the Next Great Game Challenge, a partnership between Hasbro, Inc. and Indiegogo that resulted in two independently designed games being brought to market in 2016.

Related: How One Toy Company Gets Open Innovation Right

Their names? Mr. Toast and Hex Casters. This crowdsourcing contest’s third grand prizewinner was announcedjust this past Tuesday.

Concidentally, or maybe not, Hasbro, in December, topped $5 billion for the first time in its 94-year history. Could its renewed commitment to open innovation take some credit? The toy industry has always relied on inventors for their creativity, but historically it’s had gatekeepers those inventors had to to get past.

Brian Chapman, senior vice president and global head of Design and Development at Hasbro, addressed these matters in a personal email: “We work hard to ensure that our organization fosters innovation, no matter where it comes,” Chapman wrote.

Outside innovation is incredibly important to the company, he added. “We take great pride in our legacy of working with professional inventors, as well as companies and consumers, to bring the world’s best play experiences to life,” he said. “Outside creativity complements the work we do as an organization.”

Indiegogo’s focus on innovation is evident: At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the company’s presence was undeniable. Scroll through its seemingly endless Partner page and that philosophy is clear: Helping others is apparently good business.

“Fortune 500 companies who value innovation and are looking for different ideas want to work with us,” Indiegogo cofounder Slava Rubin said, putting it simply.

And, why wouldn’t they? To learn more, I sought out Dan Goodsell, the Los Angeles-based artist who won Hasbro’s first challenge, to ask about his experience. Had Hasbro and Indiegogo really been his partners in product development?

Related: How to Inspire Innovation Within Your Business

Goodsell told me that back in the fall of 2015, he’d observed that card games were raising ample funds on crowdfunding platforms. So he set out to create his own simple version, based on an imaginary world and set of characters he had spent 17 years dreaming up and designing.

This is how the game of Mr. Toast emerged. (Over the years, Goodsell had already produced plush and vinyl toys, jewelry, buttons, and comic books based on the character Mr. Toast.)

“It’s hard to push that much stuff out in the world by yourself,” he admitted. “I always say, ‘I’m in direct competition with Mickey Mouse.’ Disney is putting out how much content every minute? So, I follow the market and carefully choose what I create with the limited dollars I have.” Smart.

His timing could not have been better: About a week after he began studying the market for uncomplicated tabletop games, he ran across an advertisement for the first Next Great Game Challenge.

The Next Great Game Challenge

The gaming giant wanted to hear from inventors. Specifically, it was looking for new ideas for face-to-face games that would “appeal to a cross-generational audience and bring families together,” according to the open innovation contest’s website.

The company’s mission was to discover games it could potentially commercialize, but “give enough flexibility to game designers, within the brief, to unearth really fresh and creative ideas,” Chapman explained.

At the time Goodsell became aware of the Challenge, he said, the deadline to enter was just four weeks away. In our interview, I expressed incredulity that he had invented such a clever little game so quickly and on his first try. But he demurred. “I’m not some sort of game savant,” he protested. “There are only so many kinds of gaming systems.”

And, indeed, the Mr. Toast game is based on simple math. Goodsell’s characters have a track record of appealing to people, he pointed out. He’d been working on his humor-writing skills for no less than 15 years. And he’d spent his lifetime playing games, including Dungeons & Dragons when he was a kid. The Mr. Toast game is adorably drawn and its theme is truly universal. Who likes to do chores? No one!

Out of more than 500 submissions received, this concept and four others were selected to run a campaign on Indiegogo, with help from both companies. Goodsell had run a successful campaign once before, so he had a sense of what to expect, but he told me that still took the time to study how other successful campaigns had marketed themselves, particularly using video.

Armed with a template and marketing advice from Indiegogo, he raised a little over $10,000. Shortly after, a team of Hasbro game experts, designers and innovators selected Mr. Toast as the prizewinner and awarded Goodsell $10,000. (Interestingly, the game that raises the most money does not automatically win.)

Of the 249 people who backed him, Goodsell estimated that only 25 percent were unfamiliar with his previous work. So, entrepreneurs, take heed. When you crowdfund a game, Goodsell explained, “You’re really selling to your own base — friends, family, fans.”

The commercial stage

Less than a year after Goodsell originally conceived of the game, it began retailing at Target. That’s fast.

Chapman described the partnership between Hasbro, Indiegogo and the creative community as “another smart way to inject freshness into the industry, plus diversify our portfolio.” Hence: open innovation in a nutshell.

Goodsell had all of the resources he needed to create a product that Hasbro would benefit from taking to market. That meant, the designer said, that he experienced none of the risk that deciding to prototype and order inventory on his own would have brought him. Without having to do much testing of its own, Hasbro identified a great new game concept. That’s a win-win as I see it.

It’s also fun: Being flown out to Hasbro’s headquarters in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, was incredible, Goodsell said.

“You walk in there and you think, ‘Yeah, I’d like to be part of this.’ As much as I love being an independent creator, I have a limited amount of tools to influence the world — to make some noise. They have their own digital studio in the building! It was great to be recognized.”

The deal

And the deal they struck? Goodsell said he’s happy with it. Their partnership thus far has been really positive, the artist said.

“I mean, especially when you consider the fact that if I hadn’t worked with Hasbro, I’d be selling these out of the back of my car . . . I wasn’t looking at this opportunity from a financial standpoint as much as getting the word out and the possibility of developing a positive relationship with Hasbro over the long run,” Goodsell said.

And that makes a whole lot of sense. It’s what licensing is all about: forging a mutually beneficially, hopefully long-term relationship.

Hasbro’s other moves

Hasbro is opening up in other ways. For example, the company recently began inviting inventors to submit their ideas for new toys and games directly, via an online portal, SPARK Hasbro. This is largely in part because the company wanted to be able to communicate directly with its biggest fans — its superheroes, as Chapman described them.

“Consumer creativity can truly complement the experiences we craft as an organization,” he wrote in his email.

In the past five years, the company has also established InventionLab, a “home-within-a-home for outside innovators,” as well as a fellowship program. Simply put, to meet its goal of finding niche ideas that no one in the industry has commercialized, Hasbro is thinking outside of the box.

And in fact, analysts have referenced the company’s strategy of working with global inventor networks as one of its key growth drivers, Chapman said.

Final thoughts

When I got my own start in the toy industry in the late ’80s, it was notoriously closed off. Having to rely on a toy broker was the norm. Blessedly, that seems to be changing. To be clear, Chapman wrote, the innovative new programs Hasbro has put in place will be “another venue for idea submissions, and not a replacement for our current processes or ongoing innovator relationships.”

Really, it’s simple. Open innovation is also a philosophy that says great ideas can come from anywhere. And that’s exactly how Chapman himself put it.“We need the best ideas,” the executive wrote wrote, “no matter where they come from.”

Stephen Key

Stephen Key is an inventor, author, speaker and co-founder of InventRight, LLC., a Glenbrook, Nev.-based company that educates entrepreneurs in how to bring ideas to market.

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The focus for many entrepreneurs is often on securing new customers.

While this is clearly important and warrants a strategy and associated resource, many business owners overlook the importance of retaining existing customers.

Existing customers have already spent money with your company, which means you’ve already earned their trust. In addition, if you have a good product or service, the chances are that existing customers would trust you enough to buy from you again.

According to Bain & Co. it costs anywhere from five to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain a customer. They also found that increasing customer retention rates by 5 percent increases profits by between 25 percent to 95 percent.

To adapt a quote from the famous 1967 Cat Stevens song The First Cut is The Deepest: In business, the first customer is the hardest. So, once you have a customer, it is important to double down and keep that customer — or, better, increase how much that customer is spending with you

Here are three ways to encourage existing customers to do more business with you:

1. Upsell

Assuming you have a product or service that solves the problem of your target customer group, customers will likely give you the first opportunity to help them before going elsewhere. As such, you need to take advantage of that window.

One of the ways in which you can do this is through upselling them on products that complement what they have already bought from you. If they’ve already purchased an online training product from you, for example, then they might also welcome one-on-one coaching for more tailored business advice.

Typically, your upsell will be a higher-ticket item and will allow you to continue your relationship with your customer.

Some businesses intentionally sell initial products or services at a loss so they can win over a customer and gradually sell them higher-margin products.

If you’ve not already planned upsells in your business, you need to start considering what you could offer.

2. The loyalty program

A loyalty program is nothing new, but it works really well. Many of the world’s most successful businesses have been using them for year.

A good example of a loyalty program is Amazon Prime. Prime gives users two-day shipping for eligible purchases, unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Prime Video and the ability to borrow books from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library for $99 a year.

3. Customer service

Somehow, customer service continues to be an underestimated tactic for business growth. However, in order to make an impression, excelling in providing great customer service is the key.

In fact, poor customer service is one of the main reasons that many consumers switch suppliers leading to customer attrition.

Employing these three strategies in your business will compound growth by reducing customer acquisition costs while, at the same time, allowing you to sell a broader product set to help your customers and solve problems important to them.

Tallat Mahmood

Tallat Mahmood is the founder of The Smart Business Plan Academy, his online course on building powerful business plans for small and medium-sized businesses to help them grow and raise capital. Tallat has worked fo…

A few weeks ago, my son introduced me to a reality game show called Hunted. The premise of the game is that nine teams of ordinary people go “on the run” as if they were fugitives hiding from the law. They have to make it 28 days without being caught in order to win the prize money.

It seems simple enough until you meet the people they’re hiding from, which consists of former CIA, FBI, British Intelligence, White House Chief of Information officers, U.S. Army Cyber Intelligence, SWAT Commanders, Navy SEALs. U.S. Marshals, Naval Intelligence and professional profilers.

It’s not simple to make it even one day when these professionals have, combined, over 100 years of experience of chasing down high-profile fugitives and terrorists.

The leader of this expert team is Robert W. Clark, a former senior FBI official. He has 21 years of FBI experience under his belt. When referring to the Hunted show he stated, “They [the competitors] think this is a game, but my team is going to take this very seriously because this is what we do for a living.” As I watched these episodes, Clark made quote after quote that related to something I didn’t expect, and which made me really happy — marketing.

1. “We know them better than they know themselves.”

In order to find these fugitive teams, the command unit researched everything they could find on the fugitives. They scoured through their social media pages with their photos and their posts. They knew the places they liked to hang out, what movies they watched, the age of their kids, if they had a lot of friends or if they were more introverted. Everything. They understood their day-to-day lives and, therefore, were able to know their weaknesses and their strengths.

Do you know your customers and clients better than they know themselves?

Have you researched and profiled? Do you know if your type of client is an extravert, introvert, has kids, loves to dance, works 60 hours a week? Do you know what magazines they read and music they listen to? Do you know your potential customers better than they know themselves?

The most effective marketing strategies require you to understand the needs of your customers in order for your company to provide the solution.

Related: 5 Low-Cost Ways to Make a Marketing Splash in Your Local Community (Infographic)

2. “I want to know what they’re thinking before they think it.”

The command team had enough research on each fugitive that they knew which family members they might turn to if they needed help. They knew what type of environment, social setting or geographic location each fugitive would be inclined to go to if they were stressed or needed assistance. They knew what decisions the fugitives would make before they made them.

Innovation is a word we like to throw around in the business world. We want to be cutting-edge. Businesses are worried about staying ahead of their competitors, but really, they want to stay one step ahead of the customers. Marketers need to completely understand their customer to the point that they know what their customers are going to do or need and be proactive in finding a solution.

Too many business owners make the mistake of thinking they understand their customers, but fail to do the extensive research and analysis needed to really get inside their heads.

Related: To Be Blunt, a Lot of Your Social-Media Marketing is Getting You Nowhere

Just to be clear: Don’t try to gain access to your customers’ computers, cell phones, social media, vehicles and bank accounts.

But, you should use all of the tools you have available to build a social media strategy that will get in front of them.

In 2017, we have a wide variety of tools to use in our marketing arsenal, and you need to know the marketing tools available to make sure you use the right ones for your business.

Related: How to Create a Marketing Plan

It’s time to start thinking like an analyst. Know your customers better than they know themselves. Predict their next steps before they know what they are going to do. Use every tool in your toolbox.

Marketing is more than just increasing your Facebook likes. It requires the ability to get inside the minds of the people who will need your product or service and show up before they arrive, so you can capture them when they get there.

Katherine Keller

Katherine Keller is the president of Katherine Keller International, an online marketing, branding, copywriting and graphic design agency. She also works with small business entrepreneurs, building their success mindset and overco…

On this episode of Resilience, Entrepreneur Network partner Jason Saltzman sits down with Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Dodgeball and Foursquare. Crowley explains how he started the social apps, how his business has morphed over the past eight years and how he couldn’t predict one of Foursquare’s most valuable traits. He also talks about stepping down as the company’s CEO and the future for Foursquare and for himself.

Watch the video to learn more and catch the full episode here.

Related: What’s the Worst Thing That Can Happen as an Entrepreneur?

Entrepreneur Networkis a premium video network providing entertainment, education and inspiration from successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders. We provide expertise and opportunities to accelerate brand growth and effectively monetize video and audio content distributed across all digital platforms for the business genre.

EN is partnered with hundreds of top YouTube channels in the business vertical and provides partners with distribution on Entrepreneur.com as well as our apps on Amazon Fire, Roku and Apple TV.

Click here to become a part of this growing video network.

Jason Saltzman

Jason Saltzman is a seasoned entrepreneur with a background in sales and marketing. Through his role as CEO of Alley and as a TechStars mentor, he advises hundreds of startups, offering real life practical application and creative mark…

More than 70 percent of adults surf the web on their phones while they watch TV.

They’re looking at sites they see in commercials. And they’re definitely reading and commenting on social media. You can assume they’re also doing other things like looking up actors’ previous roles, sports stats, etc.

This happens so often a term has evolved to describe the people who exhibit this behavior: second screen audiences.

Second Screen Stats

New data from eMarketer indicates that this phenomenon is growing rapidly. Exactly 74.1 percent of adults this year will surf the web on their phone while they watch TV. Data suggests this figure will increase to 79 percent next year. Just three years ago, just over half of all adults would go on the web on their phones while they watched television.

This increase in second screen use is not limited to smartphones, either. The eMarketer data shows that desktop and laptop use by adults watching TV at the same time continues to go up. The same can be said for tablet use.

What Are People Searching For While Watching TV?

A long time ago there was a push to connect the web and TV directly. Now, however, thanks to the emergence of second screen audiences, they are. Though that connection is more indirect than what might have been originally envisioned.

More people are searching for and talking about the things they see on TV than ever before.

The eMarketer data shows that 31 percent of second screen audiences are browsing the web for content related to what they’re watching. Only back in 2014, that number was just 23 percent.

Nineteen percent of people are using their second screen to have social conversations related to what they’re watching. That’s up 2 percent from 2014.

For brands and companies that take advantage of this phenomenon, it’s really a form of social media newsjacking. That’s where businesses get involved in conversations revolving around current events.

What Your Small Business Can Do to Reach Second Screen Audiences

Twitter’s content manager Marissa Window writes on the Business for Twitter blog that people conversing about their TV viewing like to see brands interact.

She writes:

“Fans on Twitter like seeing brands join the conversation with relevant content or deals, and the same can be said about ads — 42 percent more time is spent looking at Twitter Ads relevant to surrounding content.”

So, align your social media strategy to talk to this crowd. Think about the shows and events on TV that tend to get people talking.

In entertainment, you know the Twitter and Facebook feeds light up when it’s Oscars night. And in sports, big games like the Super Bowl, March Madness and other championships bring out sports fans and their opinions.

One area where you might want to shy away from is politics, however. There, you risk alienating half your audience with just one post.

Think about the audience that’s most attracted to your business and brand. Find their social media conversations and join in. Reality shows are great examples. They’re often business-based and have loyal followers who like to chat online while they’re watching.

For example, a small restaurant might want to join in the conversation on #TopChef while a boutique clothing store would seek to talk to audiences tweeting about #ProjectRunway.

Successful online marketers are always on their toes. They constantly adapt to new trends and technology to have an edge over their competition.

Do you think you have what it takes to join their ranks? Then you should always think and act fast.

For example, remember when Google announced that more searches now occur on mobile devices than on computers? That was two years ago. And yet, a lot of website owners and bloggers still don’t have a mobile marketing strategy in place.

By now, it’s clear that mobile is the future of digital marketing. With technologies like VR and live video streaming, users are growing more concerned over mobile experience. In fact, 57 percent of them will refuse to recommend a business if it has a subpar mobile site.

Boosting Your Site’s Mobile User Experience

Don’t worry — you can still catch up by taking advantage of the latest trends in the mobile space. You can start with the following:

Creating Mobile-Friendly Emails

Email marketing has been one of the cornerstones of digital marketing ever since the beginning. This time, evidence suggests that you should start optimizing emails for mobile users.

According to statistics, people now read emails longer on smartphones. It’s also predicted that, by 2018, 80 percent of users will use email services exclusively through a mobile device.

For starters, implementing a responsive email design is a great way to boost the mobile experience of your subscribers. Considering that platforms like Pagemodo, iContact or MailChimp already offer a number of responsive templates for emails. Then it should be easy to check this off your list.

Just remember to optimize every single detail for mobile screens. Buttons, for example, must be large and easy to tap. The content must also be presented in a long-scrolling format, which allows mobile users to simply swipe up to read the entire email.

Below are some additional tips on how to create mobile-friendly emails:

Compress images to reduce loading time. Remember that some mobile users still use 3G or slower connections, so try to avoid using high-resolution images.

Make fonts larger. To compensate for the smaller display of mobile devices, try to set your font size to 13 or 14 pixels.

Make sure CTAs are text-based. If you use an image as your CTA (Call to Action), there’s a chance that users won’t even see it.

Shorten your subject lines. To ensure good readability, avoid using long subject lines that needlessly take a lot of space.

Engaging Mobile Users via Video

Video content is long considered as the most effective in terms of engagement. Users love videos so much that email subject lines with the word “video” get 65 percent more click-throughs.

Incidentally, 51 percent of all video plays happen on mobile devices. So if you want to improve your site’s mobile experience, you need to diversify your content strategy and start thinking about video content.

Apart from using tools like Animatron to create professional-looking explainer videos, you should also consider launching live streams with platforms like Facebook Live, and Periscope.

Not only are live videos easier to make, they are also great for winning more views on social media. Studies show that users spend triple the time watching live videos compared to regular videos.

Here are some ideas for your first live video:

Interview a social media influencer

Have a live Q&A or webinar session and interact with your audience via comments

Turn Your Site into a Progressive Web App

Lastly, another trend you should watch out for is the emergence of progressive web apps or PWAs. These are websites that can deliver app-like experiences to mobile users. They are fast, have offline capabilities, and are specifically optimized for touch-based interactions.

Some of the common features of PWAs include:

Push notifications,

Home screen shortcut,

Quick load times even through 3G connections,

100 percent mobile responsive.

Since Google is all about user experience, they cover several case studies on brands that utilize PWAs.

Unfortunately, developing a PWA is not a DIY project you can do overnight. It is a significant investment that can prepare your brand for the future of mobile marketing.

To help point you in the right direction, Here is an infographic by Zeolearn that explains how PWAs work:

Ultimately, it all boils down to user experience and how your brand can make a lasting impact in your audience’s lives. The strategies highlighted above helped you plan your mobile marketing campaign this 2017. What you need now is diligence, patience and relentlessness when it comes to executing these strategies.

If you haven’t taken adequate steps to protect your business from burglary or theft, now is the right time to rethink your strategy. According to new data by Chicago-based insurance agency Insureon, 8.8 percent of small businesses suffered a burglary of theft in 2016.

The survey further reveals a business owner might have to pay approximately $8,000 out of pocket for a burglary or theft incident. That’s a significant price to pay for any small business.

Businesses Reluctant to File for Insurance Claims

Other than burglary or theft, many small businesses also experienced client complaints or contract disputes (22.2 percent) and employee injury (10.6 percent), all incidents potentially resulting in costs that might have been covered by insurance.

It’s worth noting that 35.2 percent of businesses were hit by an incident that insurance might have covered. Surprisingly however, many small business owners like Dylan Gallagher, owner of tour company Orange Sky Adventures, aren’t filing claims.

“We had our van broken into by a robber the other day and I had two choices: pay the $300 bill myself or go through my insurance company,” says Gallagher. “I chose to pay the bill myself to avoid bureaucracy. Besides, I’d rather keep my insurance premiums low and just get on with business.”

Tip to Prevent Thefts

For businesses, it pays to boost security to prevent thefts or burglaries. Luckily, there are several budget-friendly options to choose from.

Take the dropcam for example. Considered one of the easiest entry-level solutions, dropcams are do-it-yourself devices that address small business needs.

I’m a collector. I have a nice library of cartoon books, I have shelves full of superhero statues and literally two walls of my office are covered in hundreds of LEGO minifigs. I accumulate stuff.

But as fun as it is, it’s also sort of a requirement of the job. In addition to toys and such, I also collect words and phrases and idioms.

I hear something on the radio and I tuck it away in my brain. I read something in the newspaper and it gets filed. Something comes up in conversation and, well, you get the idea.

Often I can tell you where and how something pops for me but, in this case, the term “writ large” just fell out of a drawer in my gray matter or something. I happened across it, picked it up, and this cartoon presented itself.

And the best part about this particular collection? I don’t have to justify it to my wife.

This article, “How to Grab Attention in Your Next Email Marketing Campaign” was first published on Small Business Trends

If you want your customers to find you online easily, you’ll need to follow some recognized techniques for search engine optimization, usually referred to as SEO.

Let’s put it this way. If the internet’s search engines can’t find you online, your customers won’t find you either! So if you’re building an online business, SEO, as daunting as it can seem at first, is an area you really need to learn about. Consider this article a first step and go online to find out more.

To get you started, below are 4 ethical SEO strategies that have been proven to work.

Post Unique Content

One of the most important things you can do to move your website higher in Google rankings is to post unique content. Just so you know, the higher your website’s ranking with Google, the closer it is to landing on the first page or even at the top of a customer’s search results, making it easier for your customers to find you.

Google is more sophisticated now than it ever has been at searching out poor quality content on websites and lowering those websites’ rankings. What this means to you in your business is that you must develop unique and useful content. Besides, if your content is interesting and useful, more people will stick around to read it. And isn’t that what you really want, after all?

The key to good content is giving website visitors something they’ve never read before. While it goes almost without saying that it should be well written, make your content unique, useful, and interesting and not only will your Google ranking increase, more of your customers will stay to explore your website.

Keep Your Website Up to Date

Your customers can spot at a glance whether you’ve recently updated your website or not. Old websites that haven’t been updated for years don’t attract many visitors, and those who do drop in are not likely to stay for very long.

Keep your website attractive and up to date by continuously making improvements. (Hint: if you need some fresh motivation, just check out your competitors’ websites!)

You’ll want to make improvements not only to the components of your website but also, as we’ve already mentioned, to your content. As times change, new and interesting stories develop, which means there is always something to write about.

Don’t Stuff Your Content with Keywords

Your keywords are those words and phrases that your customers are most likely to use when they’re searching for your website online. Search engines find your website by homing in on the keywords in your content, so the keywords you choose to use are crucial. Because SEO keywords are so important many believe that the more keywords they put into their webpage, the better their ranking.

However, if you stuff your content with keywords, it will be clunky and awkward and difficult to read. It might not even make sense. Further, if Google catches you stuffing your content with keywords, your website could be penalized.

Link Only to High Quality Sites

When you insert links to high quality websites into your content you send a signal to Google that your website has a certain level of authority.

While you’re at it, though, be sure to check that all the links in your website are unbroken and correct. Bad links will frustrate website visitors, who are therefore not likely to stay long or return. Take your time when you’re posting content and rigorously check to ensure that all your links are operational.

Finally, if you follow the suggestions here when you’re implementing your SEO strategy, your website’s rankings are sure to improve.

The following excerpt is from Glenn Llopis’s book The Innovation Mentality. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble

The wealth created through authentic business relationships stimulates growth and innovation, advances commerce, and benefits all. Relationships sustain more than momentum—they create and sustain relevancy. But these high-level relationships take time to cultivate. By valuing relationships, maximizing the utilization of resources, investing in your people, and always looking for ways to improve strategic-resource sharing, your business sustains momentum. The key word? Relationships.

To seize the opportunities great relationships create, leaders must evolve from managing and live with an entrepreneurial spirit that values relationships and invests in people, including themselves. Then they must deploy two supporting characteristics: first, lead to leave a legacy, which holistically supports better relationships through reciprocity; and second, work with a generous purpose, which requires a commitment to collaboration, sharing, and giving to grow.

Hundreds of studies of Millennials and shift populations show your employees, partners, and customers want to have relationships with you, one another, your business, and your brand. Lessons from the longest study on happiness—the Harvard Study of Adult Development—which tracked annually the lives of 724 men of varying economic statuses show that “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”

I can’t think of better foundational or fiscal reasons—happiness and health, not to mention growth and innovation—for building great relationships. So why aren’t you building them? Because you’re likely still stuck in the templates of business past. You lack the ability to see that building these relationships doesn’t start with others; it starts with you, which is why you must continuously invest in yourself to sustain your relevancy. This investment will require you to find the right people who can further guide you and teach you to invest in yourself. It requires you to answer a foundational question of living with an entrepreneurial spirit: How can I nurture and develop a relationship that invests in mutual success for the future rather than what I need now?

Only after answering this question can leaders truly value relationships in the broader workplace and marketplace and encourage entrepreneurial mindsets in others. But you can’t have leadership, let alone a successful business, without strong management of and thus accountability to processes and systems. Management is important for saving time and completing the most mundane tasks, as well as for knowing what steps to take when you need to put out fires. Managing people, however, isn’t the same and can’t be done by templates, accountability to job descriptions, and letting the business define the individual. Relationships must be mutually rewarding and beneficial. They value individuality, allowing that individuality to prosper, multiply, and add value to others. They’re about giving not getting and creating that mutual success. They’re about sharing and taking business to the next level so you can grow.

Of course, you can’t operationalize relationships without good management. When people can’t automatically provide me with information—numbers, data, materials—they need, that’s a management problem, because I haven’t provided the tools they need to manage it or manage the people the information comes from. I can help those people deal with this management issue through my relationship with them and by coaching them to have a better relationship with others. But the real solution is to have a management process in place that demands the information so no one needs to rely on a personal relationship to ensure that things are done properly. The management process should do that and then “Leadership à la Relationship” can take things to the next level.”

That next level is what it means to grow by creating a culture of reciprocity in relationships through leading to leave a legacy and working with a generous purpose of giving. First, ask the legacy questions:

What is the legacy that my promise has created for those around me?

Do my employees believe that their jobs aren’t just jobs—they’re opportunities to shape their legacies?

Do my customers, clients, and partners believe that I do?

Then, you ask the generous purpose questions:

How do I give back to my people?

How can I share my expertise beyond my everyday work?

Do my people, customers/clients, and external partners believe that my company promotes sharing among and giving back to my people and the communities and causes they and the company embrace?

Relationships should always be reciprocal. Unfortunately, they’ve become too much about getting without giving. Real relationships can’t be about something that exists for our own benefit or getting a return on an agreement to work together in any capacity, be it a mentorship or a contractual agreement. They’re about perpetuating the momentum that each person brings to the relationship.

The same must be true in leadership: It should never be one-sided, nor should the leader always be the one generating the ideas or making the decisions. Leadership means actively listening and advancing the ideas of others (and injecting recommendations along the way to further strengthen or add value to them). If you’re the type of leader who needs all the attention, you won’t seek to cultivate wisdom in others.

Reciprocity is key; cultivating wisdom requires being in touch with what matters most to your employees and giving them the room to express their opinions and put their ideas to the test. The more you can gauge and unleash the passionate pursuits of your employees, the more effective you’ll be in challenging them to stretch their thinking and expand their endless possibilities.

Relationships in the marketplace must also go beyond the transaction—to evolve beyond the sale. Because what influences the marketplace? The individual—much more than ever before. Because we’ve shifted to individuality in the marketplace, customers are looking well beyond a brand’s products and are measuring a brand by intimacy and relationships with them as they make their selections. Customers want to share how great and authentic the story is behind what they consume. If all you have is a transactional relationship, then as soon as another brand offers a better deal, they’re gone.

Why don’t we all do the things required to create great relationships? Probably because they require hard work to do and maintain. But if you can invest in your relationships, stay authentic, and not get stuck in the past, you will continue to stimulate growth and innovation, advance your business, and benefit everyone involved.

Glenn Llopis

Glenn Llopis is the Chairman of the Glenn Llopis Group – a nationally recognized thought-leadership, human capital, and business strategy consulting firm. As a speaker, consultant, and executive coach to Fortune 500 companies and…